Twenty three La Boulange locations, including favored locales in Lafayette, Walnut Creek and Danville, will be closed by September of this year after the bakery chain’s parent company – Starbucks – branded them “unsustainable.”
The coffee-driven mega-company said it would absorb both La Boulange’s menu and as many of its workers as it could into existing Starbucks stores throughout the Bay Area. Founder Pascal Rigo’s Parisian-themed chain of stores was acquired by Starbucks in 2012 for $100 million.
La Boulange’s selection of food and coffee was appreciated by many in The Numbers, several of whom told NEWS24-680 their visits to local stores had become a matter of morning ritual.
“I didn’t know that,” said an obviously dismayed Candace Pennicooper at the chain’s Walnut Creek location Wednesday. “I came for coffee and meetings at every opportunity. I’d call that a loss.”
La Boulange products, provided by the chain’s two manufacturing centers, will apparently remain in Starbucks stores.
A land rush of sorts for the storefronts, inevitably situated in prime locations throughout the area, is expected.
Very surprising. It will be better for my waistline as I was eating way too many of those apple pastries with my morning swimming pool of coffee. Hard to believe they were not sustainable. High rents?
I think the “unsustainable” wording refers back to John D. Rockefeller capitalism. If you can’t compete on price or quality, buy it out and close it. Why would they want to keep open a small competitor they wanted to kill? La Boulange’s pastry selection and ample seating made the cookie-cutter typical Starbucks look pathetic by comparison.
Totally bummed to hear this.
Bummer.
That’s a loss for the area.
@Napoleon spot on.
A hundred million to buy out and kill off a competitor. That’s a lot of mocchachinos.
I’ll miss our Danville store. It was a good place for morning breakfast meetings. Hope all the good people there find new employment.
Such a shame.
Big loss for us.